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Learning Needs Analysis (Part I): Identifying Performance Gaps

Learning Needs Analysis (LNA) is the process that disciplines one of the most common organizational reflexes: “ Let’s run a training and things will improve. ” Rather than jumping straight to a course or workshop when a problem appears, LNA slows that reaction down and introduces a more structured chain of reasoning: Performance Signal → Performance Gap → Importance Screening → Root Cause Analysis → Intervention Design → Evaluation As Kenney and Reid (1) note, “ the quality of training can be no better than the quality that the analysis permits. ” In other words, the effectiveness of any learning intervention is largely determined before the training itself begins. Training initiatives can fail for several reasons. They may target the wrong problem , focus on the wrong capability , or reach the wrong population . In some cases, the underlying issue is not solvable through training at all. When this happens, organizations invest time and resources in inter...
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Why Organizations Struggle to Learn (Part II): A Systems Perspective

In the previous article, drawing on Argyris and Schön's work, we looked at why organizations often struggle to learn despite the importance and investment they place on training and learning programs. We saw that much of the problem lay in the gap between what organizations say they believe and the assumptions that actually guide their behavior. When that gap goes unnoticed, and when there is little room to question the mental models and practices shaping how problems are understood, learning tends to remain limited. Previous article in this series Why Organizations Struggle to Learn: Insights from Argyris and Schön In this article, we build on that discussion by turning to Peter Senge’s broader perspective. Rather than focusing only on how learning happens or breaks down within organizations, Senge asks a broader question: what would an organization look like if learning were actually built int...
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Reconsidering Workplace Motivation (Part II): Self-Determination Theory

In the first article of the workplace motivation series, we explored how competence beliefs shape motivation at work. We asked whether what looks like low motivation might sometimes reflect a quieter doubt: “ Am I capable ?” But competence is only one piece of the picture.  Another influential framework in motivation research is Self-Determination Theory , developed by Ryan and Deci (2000) (1) . This theory distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and argues that human motivation is deeply shaped by the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: autonomy , relatedness , and competence . In this article, we will take a closer look at these three needs and try to understand how shifts in employee motivation can often be traced back to whether these needs are supported or frustrated in the workplace. We will also include workplace learning scenarios to see how they operate in practice. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivati...
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Reconsidering Workplace Motivation (Part I): Self-Efficacy

Motivation is basically the inner engine that drives us to set goals and move toward them. When our motivation is high, we are more driven to achieve and more ready to invest our time, energy, and emotions to reach something that feels important. When it is low, the opposite happens: goal setting itself becomes weaker, and the effort we put in naturally drops. In a workplace context, this shift is directly tied to how satisfied people are in their jobs, how happy they are at work, how well they perform, and how strongly they feel connected to the broader goals of their team or company (1) (2) . Over time, sustained low motivation and its accompanying effects can wear down both sides: the individual employee and the organization as a whole. In this blog series, we will examine workplace motivation through three major motivational theories. Instead of focusing only on how to “boost” motivation, we will explore the psychological mechanisms that shape it.  In this first article, we be...
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Why Organizations Struggle to Learn (Part I): Insights from Argyris and Schön

In today’s world, almost every organization claims to value learning. And to be fair, most of them probably do recognize its importance since adapting to rapidly changing conditions and demands of today’s environment has become an absolute necessity in a competitive market.  In line with this, we see more and more companies investing in training programs, running feedback cycles, conducting performance reviews, and constantly talking about continuous improvement. But the real question is this: Do all these efforts actually make the organization more innovative, more resilient, more capable of reaching its strategic goals? Or do similar problems quietly resurface, while the same strategic miscalculations are repeated in slightly different forms? More broadly, what does it actually mean for an organization to learn? Even at the individual level, identifying the signs of learning and measuring change is already complex. When we shift to the collective level, to some...
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